New York State debt tops $63 billion

ALBANY -- The state government's debt has topped $63.3 billion, with New York on track to approach its borrowing limit in early 2014, the comptroller's office reported Monday.

That debt burden, averaging $3,253 per resident, is almost three times the national median, according to the report. New York's state-funded debt is second only to California's $96.4 billion and 80 percent higher than New Jersey, which is third.

New York paid $6.8 billion on its loans in 2011-12, though borrowing has continued to outpace payoffs. The $63.3 billion debt as of last March 31 was $1.6 billion higher than a year earlier.

"At this point, 95 percent of the borrowing over the past 10 years has been without voter approval," Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. Most came from public authorities, avoiding the general prohibition in the state constitution against issuing debt without the approval of voters and the Legislature.

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Those entities created by the state Legislature, such as the Thruway Authority, develop and maintain infrastructure like roads, bridges and schools.

The $63.3 billion debt total was $24 billion, or 62 percent, higher than a decade earlier. DiNapoli said that could threaten critical infrastructure projects, including those needed following Superstorm Sandy.

About $8.5 billion of the total was issued for operating and other expenses, instead of capital projects, the report said. It called for a constitutional amendment to prohibit non-capital debt, while raising the debt ceiling from 4 percent to 5 percent of personal income and counting $10.5 billion of state-funded debt that's part of his calculation but currently left out of the statutory debt ceiling calculation.

State lawmakers in 2000 imposed the ceiling, and they could extend it. The report projected New York's borrowing capacity falling to $509 million under the ceiling after the 2013-14 fiscal year.

The ceiling, according to November budget estimates, had $4 billion in capacity left at the end of the 2011-12 fiscal year last March.

According to the report, the Cuomo administration and lawmakers took steps last year to improve capital planning through a task force to coordinate public works projects among state agencies and public authorities.

"Through Gov. Cuomo's NY Works Task Force, New York is coordinating its capital spending plan for the first time and has in fact tightened its bonding practices," said Morris Peters, spokesman for the Cuomo administration's Budget Division. "Annual capital spending has grown at just 2 percent and, by targeting investment and exercising restraint, the state is generating additional capacity under the debt limit for critical infrastructure investment."